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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320073">Driver's Seat [The Grand Tour]</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/traitorleech/pseuds/traitorleech'>traitorleech</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode Related, The Grand Tour: s3e13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:06:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320073</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/traitorleech/pseuds/traitorleech</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Grand Tour comes to a halt in Mongolia, where Jeremy and James reach an agreement about Hammond and John.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Driver's Seat [The Grand Tour]</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's just a little bit of fun and exercise because I finished watching The Grand Tour and got bored.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mongolia, a truly magnificent country, located between Russia to the north and China to the south. Its variety of scenery, consisting largely of upland steppes, semi deserts, deserts, rocky mountain ranges in the west and north, alternating with lake-dotted basins seemed to be an exemplary location for a The Grand Tour special.</p><p>However, there was one substantial problem to it. </p><p>"Now, ordinarily when we go on these adventures-," Jeremy said in front of the camera with his hands on his hips, "Well — we have a vague idea about the sort of things that we might be doing, but this time… we don’t."</p><p>Jeremy raised his hands in a helpless and confused gesture.</p><p>"No, not a clue," Richard agreed before he turned his head away and continued his game with James in the back.</p><p>Besides them, the steppe appeared to be entirely empty, relieved of any human interference that might cause some destruction of the habitat. The undisturbed nature was a scene of genuine beauty and Jeremy would lie to himself if he wouldn’t admit to it. But, what were they doing here anyway? There were no racing tracks, not even proper streets in a probably one hundred or more mile radius around them. </p><p>Richard and James carried on with their game of throwing stone-like thingies for over an hour, even the camera crew got increasingly bored of waiting and turned the cameras off eventually. There was just nothing of interest here, only grass-covered slope after slope after slope.</p><p>They were in the middle of bloody nowhere, with nothing except a car for the camera crew and their equipment stored inside it.</p><p>But they kept on waiting and an hour or so later they heard the faint thrumming of a chopper that closed in on them. <em>Finally</em>, Jeremy thought, <em>finally something more exciting happened than watching James and Richard playing their stupid game and betting on it — Hammond had won about nine pounds by now</em>.</p><p>A couple of minutes later, the helicopter came into view. Yet, it didn’t slow down, nor made it any attempt at landing. Instead, three sealed crates were pushed out of the cargo area and it took off again, disappearing in the distance behind the summit of a gently ascending hill. </p><p>What was that all about?</p><p>"Does that mean we’re not going home then?," James asked in an attempt to entertain the viewers and to maintain the so far loose mood.</p><p>"Well," Richard answered him, his words were almost drowned by Jeremy’s rumbling laughter, "James, the helicopter has buggered off. So, we’re not going home, no."</p><p>Together, they went to inspect the thrown off cargo and a short while later, they had figured out what was inside of the sealed crates. It wasn’t, what they had expected to find. </p><p>"We have an engine, we have headlights, we have a rear axle-," Jeremy listed a small number of the pieces they’ve got.</p><p>"There’s enough spare parts to build a car," Richard interrupted him and his features changed from confused to slightly concerned as he eyed the content of the crate they were standing next to. </p><p><em>He probably wasn’t too far off</em>, Jeremy thought. </p><p>That evening, the mood had noticeably dropped to a new low while Jeremy fought with their food rations and not even the breathtaking, now dark and gloomy landscape could mend it and lift his spirits. And to his surprise, not one single crew member could think of anything to say to mock him — that was unusual. </p><p>
  <em>However, it could be worse.</em>
</p><p>And it got worse, starting with Richard’s and James’ almost non-existent progress at the end of the day. </p><p>"This is-," Jeremy said, breathing in deeply to prevent himself from punching somebody in the face when he saw the beginning of what would essentially become their 'car', "-possibly the most terrible thing I have ever seen in my entire life and that includes looking at your hangover-faces on the morning after you got shitfaced and the Land Rover Discovery"</p><p>After James and Richard explained to Jeremy what they had planned for the following day and he had settled a little dispute between the two, they went to the campsite where Jeremy had prepared what he would never, under no circumstances call 'dinner' — but basically was — and sat down around the blazing fire. The heat that dominated the day, quickly submitted to a bone chilling cold, which despite the fire got to them and started gnawing through the fabric of their clothes. A chill went down Jeremy’s spine and he shivered violently for a moment.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, they went early to bed that day, not having anything to talk about, nor any booze that could make them feel warm and within minutes, James’ snoring became the only thing Jeremy could hear, and although he had placed his tent almost half a mile away from Richard’s and James’ tents it was nerve wracking.</p><p>Jeremy pulled the string of his sleeping back tighter, in hopes to muffle and minimise the penetrating noise.</p><p>It wasn’t really efficiently and by the time the warming sun rose over the grassy slopes of the surrounding hills to set an end to the freezing night, he was the first to awake, feeling as if he had slept not more than just a mere hour on rock hard ground, besieged by a thousand chainsaws. </p><p>The second day attached itself effortlessly to the previous one. Although Hammond and May didn’t reach their goal of finishing the 'car' by the end of the day, which meant, another night without moving a single inch closer to their destination of Mörön and losing another day’s food rations. </p><p>However, while Richard and James were occupied and Jeremy was condemned to wait, he had a closer look at the camera crew’s car and he discovered a small book laying around on the subjects of facts about Mongolia. <em>That might come in handy.</em></p><p>He opened the book somewhere one quarter in and started reading;<br/>
21. The first Mongolian postage stamps appeared in August 1924,<br/>
29. The Mongol Empire was the biggest land empire on Earth,<br/>
35. Genghis Khan enacted a code known as Yassa, which enacted religious tolerance, exempted clergy of all faiths from taxation, forbade washing and urinating in running water, and prescribed the death penalty for spying, desertion, theft and adultery.</p><p>
  <em>The last one was a bit ironic, wasn’t it?</em>
</p><p>Finally the third day approached and at the end of the early hours of the morning, they were ready to go. The mood had lifted, last night had not felt as cold as the first night and Jeremy had slept a couple of hours more, despite the interesting book he couldn’t stop reading and James’ snoring sounding as if he was chopping down a whole forest. Richard was busy doing the last finishing touches and checking if everything worked satisfactorily on their car, when Jeremy reached for James’ elbow and pulled his colleague a few feet away.</p><p>"We have neither infinite rations of food, an emergency chopper, nor spare parts for the vehicle in case it crashes-," Jeremy began slowly, not lifting his eyes off Hammond, who jumped agitated around the car, "So I suggest, that we shouldn’t let the Hamster drive it, because I’m certain that he somehow will manage to flip it at five miles per hour."</p><p>James nodded amused, "He should never be allowed to drive it, or to sit in the driver’s seat. He might mistake it for a hamster wheel and go berserk!"</p><p>Jeremy laughed heartily at the image in his mind’s eye of Richard flipping the car repeatedly, going up and down the slopes, "We ought to make the driver’s seat hamster proof."</p><p>"He won’t like that one bit."</p><p>Jeremy shrugged with his shoulders and grinned, "He’ll get through it."</p>
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